This chapter should not be closed without noticing the fact that for nearly fifty years the English have had their own burying-place at Bella Vista, which is midway between Lima and Callao, and their own church and officiating chaplain. The Jews likewise have their synagogue, the Freemasons their lodges, the Chinese their temples; and although liberty of worship is not the law of the land, the utmost toleration in religious matters exists. The women of Lima, who have retained the old religion with ten times more firmness than the men, are the sole opponents of all religious reforms in the Peruvian Constitution. And because it is the women who stand in front of their Church, guarding it with their lives, let us have some respect for them. They are a powerful and determined body, as courageous as they are beautiful, which is saying much. In times of great excitement they will take part in the parliamentary debates! Not, indeed, in a parliamentary and constitutional manner, but in a manner quite effectual. These fair champions of their Church, when liberty of worship, or liberty of teaching, or any question that touches the Roman Catholic faith is being debated in the assembly, proceed thither in the tapada attire, with only one eye visible, and from the Ladies' Gallery will throw handfuls of grass to a speaker--intimating thereby his relationship to one of our domestic quadrupeds--or garlands of tinsel, just as it pleases them, and as the words of the speaker are for or against their cause. Our own House of Commons should take knowledge of this, and pause before they remove the lattice work from before their Ladies' Gallery! CHAPTER II. The Mormons are coming to Peru. Five hundred families of this formidable sect are formally announced as being on their way to the land of the Incas, and the Peruvian Government has been very liberal in its grant of free land: this may be called a revolution indeed. A Spanish law existed in Peru but little more than half a century ago, which ran as follows: 'Because the inconveniences increase from foreigners passing to the Indies, who take up their residence in seaport towns and other places, some of whom are not to be trusted in the things of our holy Catholic faith, and because it becomes us diligently to see that no error is sown among the Indians and ignorant people, we command the Viceroys, the Audiencias, and the Governors, and we charge the Archbishops and Bishops that they do all that in them lies to sweep the earth of this people, and that they cast them out of the Indies and compel them to put to sea on the first occasion and at their own cost[1].' We may also note that among these sublime laws one may be found which absolutely forbade the importation of printed books.